


Bereft and Rescued

by PaulaMcG



Series: Sketches for a Portrait [3]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Artist Remus Lupin, Crete, Drabble, Drabble Sequence, Grief/Mourning, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Lily and baby Harry in a memory, M/M, Memories, Painting, Paris (City), Portraits, Post-First War with Voldemort, Post-Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Poverty, Student Remus Lupin, The lost years, Thessaloniki, Werewolf Remus Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: After the fateful Halloween Remus continues to survive despite not always trying his best not to disappear completely.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Original Male Character(s), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Sketches for a Portrait [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758325
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Bereft and Rescued

**Author's Note:**

> These are the five 100-word drabbles – set in the so-called Lost Years – which I polished with help from my incredible Ishonn and published in December 2006 so as to continue the series of Remus’s drafts for an autobiography. I've now made a few further improvements in the texts, and added a title and a summary for this group of five.

5

He’s alone. Better not look at himself. He’s also trying to forget what one of them looked like.

To focus on these books with no pictures. Only lines of lies to memorise: violence and greed as the sub-human nature.

No colour in this room, and no one who could afford to worry about that. No heating, no food. Huddled on the thin grey mattress, wrapped in the filthy blanket, there’s just someone who’s shivering and clutching his stomach in pain. 

And still, it’s him, and he can’t help remembering. Being consoled by every single meal once offered by the traitor.

6

One image almost manages to keep him awake, dreaming of a hot meal, a bowl around which to cup his numb hands, a warm place to lay down what is left of his body. Instead, obviously, he’ll remain under a sheet of frost, if he can’t drag himself up any longer, to wander the streets until he disappears… 

The baby switches his lips into a blissful smile, still clinging to the nipple. The mother, finally realising someone else is present, reaches out. The fire of her hair burns.

A touch on his hand causes pain, condemns him back to life. 

7

He‘s rescued by a bold artist – another werewolf, not afraid of their closeness. 

Those strong strokes don’t hesitate, but he wants to step out before any portrait is fully fleshed. Before he must admit he’s a model, too. Having accepted a paint brush in his left hand, he fears that more than his body could start healing. 

In his paintings there’s perhaps a haven amid the storm, but no breath of life. 

He must receive the gift, and present something in return: force out at least words for a story to explain why he can’t help pulling his hand away.

8

Her wrinkled hand lifts a cup full of warm milk to his lips. Now the hands are joined beside her cheek, and the sharp gaze of her beady eyes leaves him for a moment: she closes her lids to make sure he can understand the sign. 

While her potions start nourishing his new skin, in his dream he is able… 

I am able to hold a paint brush again. I don’t need parchment, paper or canvas. The figures are leaping across the walls. Dolphins. The Prince of Lilies. The monster turns a human face towards me and builds the palace. 

9 

Wandering back, I focus on some changed nuances in the landscape. The human figures are distracting decoration.

Only plain pencil lines in the cheapest notebook. I still don’t pilfer anything unnecessary – or anything to sustain this body, although I admit the gift mustn’t be rejected.

But an angel’s smile is persistent enough. He takes me along and up. He shares his tricks of surviving: how to fill his stomach for free and sate his nostalgia with songs about the home lost before he was born.

No matter how bereft and disillusioned, I’m bound to see Samir as a beautiful man.

**Author's Note:**

> Each drabble can be read also separately and interpreted in any way a reader chooses.  
> Those who read other fic by me might like to know that I’ve meant to set drabble 5 in London, where Remus continues to study on a meagre scholarship – now History of Magic. [I Don’t Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22844992) shows him in the same situation.  
> Drabbles 6 and 7 are set in Paris, where Remus was an art student in 1983 - 1984, then lost his scholarship and was homeless until accepting help from a fellow artist. There’s a story I wrote about that relationship in 2004 and have now considered rewriting.  
> Drabble 8 is set on Crete, and the mentions of wall paintings refer to the frescoes at the Knossos Palace. In [Anywhere and Back Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23511046), Remus remembers the old witch who tended to him after a full moon in 1986.  
> Drabble 9 somehow summarises [Come Up With Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070517), set in Thessaloniki in 1987.


End file.
